go BOTANICAL GAZETTE [AUGUST 
It still remains true, notwithstanding that no known lycopod did 
actually cross the line. 
2. Two years later (1904) came the statement of certain canons 
of evidence, some of which were well known and had already been 
employed by zoologists and to a certain extent by botanists. These 
are stated by JEFFREY (31) as follows: (1) ancestral characters 
that have disappeared from the vegetative axes are apt to linger in 
(a) reproductive axes, (b) foliar organs, (c) seedlings (ontogenetic 
recapitulation of the zoologists), (d) first annual ring of vigorous 
shoots; (2) ancestral characters may be recalled by wounding. 
These canons of evidence have been consistently applied and 
somewhat extended in all of the subsequent work. They have been 
used to check conclusions derived from comparative anatomy 
(resemblance) and geological sequence, and in some cases practically 
overrule them. A really astonishing number of forms, both fossil 
and living, has been studied by JEFFREY and his associates in the 
last dozen years. Although not always without serious protest, 
they have been able to interpret all these forms in conformity with 
the general assumption that the Araucarineae have been derived 
from an abietineous ancestry. Much of the most important 
material has come from the Mesozoic of eastern North America. 
A’ complete review of all this work is neither necessary nor 
profitable. Essentially the same methods have been employed 
in all of it. Reference will be made only to those papers in which 
- important new facts or an advance of ideas are contained. 
3. It must always be borne in mind that this school of anatomists 
is firmly committed to the brachyblast theory of the pine cone (19, 
42,58). From the vantage point of this conviction they extend the 
conception to the ovulate cones of all other conifers, and regard 
the spur shoot of the pines as the homologue of the assumed 
axillary sporangium-bearing shoot of the cones. The contention 
is that the spur shoot has disappeared from most modern conifers, 
as represented in its most primitive form in such ancient conifers 
as Prepinus and Woodworthia. 
4. An additional canon was provided (1910) by Miss GERRY’S 
study of the distribution of the bars of Sanio in living conifers (20). 
She concluded that this structure is present in the mature secondary 
